Chapter 41
Salvario
I leave her with her mother and grandmother after she falls asleep, then step out. I wouldn’t leave her for a second, but there’s a fire in my veins that needs release.
I stop outside her room when I see Bruno and Rosie sitting there, their ears drooped. I crouch down, and they both come to me, but their movements lack their usual energy. I pat their heads, yet their eyes stay fixed on the door behind me.
“She’s afraid of them too.” Her father’s voice comes from a couch in the corridor.
I look at him. He looks worn out, nothing like the unbreakable King of the Underworld. I get up and walk toward him. Bruno and Rosie follow me.
“I want that man.” I don’t need to say who.
“I want Chris Flisher in exchange.”
“He’s already dead.” We ended him before leaving Canada. Keeping him alive was too much trouble, and worth nothing.
“You only get to kill one man.”
“I won’t kill him. I’ll leave him for you.”
He nods. “Leo will take you to him. Whatever you do, don’t kill him.”
He wants to make an example of him. And I couldn’t agree more.
He rises from the couch and leaves. I turn to Bruno and Rosie.
“Bruno, come with me. Rosie, stay.” I command.
Bruno’s body stiffens at my tone. He rises to his paws with a predatory gait. Rosie stays put.
With Bruno, I head in the direction Alessio went.
Matleon takes us to a place they call Saint Stone. I know about it. Just a few months ago, I was supposed to destroy it. This place houses their finest weapons and their prisoners. It has forty floors: only two above ground, with the rest buried beneath it.
“What will you do with the dog?” he asks as we leave the elevator on the twenty-sixth floor below ground.
“He’s for help.”
During my time as Hunter, I saw how capable Bruno was as a hunter within just a few days of staying with them.
He’s only a cuddle dog around Elowen. In her presence, he hides his predator side so well that I’m certain she has no idea what he’s truly capable of.
Once I realized that, I started training him and Rosie.
She isn’t as naturally skilled as him, as she was never trained, but she’s a strong dog too.
Matleon takes us into a gray room. In the center, that bastard sits strapped to an iron chair, metal restraints locked around his wrists and body, keeping him in place.
He looks between Matleon and me as we enter. They haven’t tortured him. He’s still wearing clean clothes, not a single drop of blood on him. I don’t like it one bit. But it’s better this way. I’d give anything to see him opened up in front of me.
As I study him, I notice claw marks on his neck. Looks like Bruno or Rosie has already tasted him. My brow furrows. Why would either of them attack him?
I turn to Matleon. “Did Bruno or Rosie attack him?”
He nods, eyes fixed on the bastard. “In Naples.”
“Why?”
“Remi said Wen told him they were playing. I doubt that.”
Me too.
I turn back to him and step closer. “Why did Bruno and Rosie attack you?”
He holds my gaze, jaw clenched. I’ll give him this, among all of Chris’s men I’ve met, he’s got the biggest balls. None of them could hold my gaze, including Chris, but he does.
As I step closer, he looks away, but his jaw remains clenched. I reach him, grab his filthy hair, and twist it at the roots until his scalp strains. I force his head back and make him look at me.
“Did you try something with her?”
He doesn’t speak. I release his head and drive my fist into his face. Bone cracks, echoing through the room. Blood and teeth spray the floor. His nose gushes, dark red spilling over his lips, down his chin, and dripping onto his shirt.
“Did.” Another punch. His cheekbone caves under my knuckles with a sickening crunch.
“You.” Another punch. His eye socket splits, skin tearing open.
“Do.” Another punch. His lip shreds against his teeth.
“Something.” Another punch. His jaw unhinges.
“To.” Another punch. Cartilage collapses under my fist. “Her?” One last punch.
His face caves inward, nose flattened, jaw hanging loose, one eye swelling shut.
What’s left is pulp. Blood and torn flesh smeared across bone. This was my fucking face. These bastards stole it.
The bastard still laughs. “I touched her cunt.” The words come out in a gargle, thick with blood, and my mind blanks. The world goes red. Rage swallows everything.
I force his shattered mouth open. His broken jaw resists, grinding against itself, but I pry it wide enough to reach inside. I find his tongue and yank it out in one pull. The root tears. Blood floods his mouth, pours down his throat, and spills over my hands in hot pulses.
Then my thumbs sink into the sockets, past the resistance of flesh, until I feel them burst in a gelatinous give. I gouge his eyes. Fluid runs down my wrists. He’s screaming now, or trying to. The sound is strangled.
Matleon steps to my side and releases his hands from the chair with a press of the handcuff lock.
I needed that. The moment his hands are free, I grab one.
I tear his fingers apart one by one, starting with the index.
Knuckles pop. Tendons snap. Bones splinter.
I shove each severed digit into his screaming, tongueless mouth until the cries muffle into near silence.
Once I’m done, I step back. My hands are drenched. My clothes are soaked through with his blood. The rage isn’t fading. It’s still there, and it won’t stop until I’ve torn down every part of him.
I step back and call for Bruno.
He comes to me, his fur standing straight, making him look twice his size. His gaze shifts between me and the man slumped in the chair.
I take two more steps back. “Go.”
A growl rumbles deep in Bruno’s chest, echoing through the empty room, then he lunges at Hunter. That’s him. The real Hunter Blackwood.
The bastard makes a wet, strangled sound as Bruno tears him apart, starting at his throat, moving to his shoulder, then his chest. Bruno rips away chunks of muscle and fat. He tears off what’s left of his face—his cheeks, lips, nose.
“This is satisfying to watch,” Matleon mutters. “But I like the monster in you better.”
“He should have stayed away from her,” I grit out.
They should have never made her a pawn.
“Stop,” I order when he’s dismantled most of him. But he doesn’t stop, as he isn’t satisfied yet.
“Bruno, stop,” I order harder, and this time he stops.
“Come back,” I order. He moves back, still watching the filth. His silver-and-gray fur is covered in blood.
I crouch and run a hand from his head down his back. “Well done.”
He licks his mouth, still not shifting his gaze from his target. I stroke my hand down his back one more time, settling him onto his haunches.
“Stay,” I order, and rise.
I walk to the thrashing, disfigured motherfucker and pull out the small box of flammable powder. I open the lid and sprinkle it over him. With his eyes torn out, he can’t see me. I want him to, but this works too.
I step back, pulling out a cigarette and lighter from my pocket. I press the cigarette between my lips, light it, and slip the lighter back.
Only one puff, or she’ll get mad. Rage pulses at the base of my skull.
She won’t get mad because of this motherfucker in front of me.
She won’t tell me smoking is bad for me.
She won’t refuse to talk to me or stop me from touching her.
Because this fucking bastard put her in a state where she doesn’t even know who I am.
I take two more puffs to cool the fire, but it doesn’t settle even a bit, and it won’t until I see it burning him instead of me.
I pull out the butt and toss it at him. Within a second, the fire catches, and his fading throaty cries start again, louder and more agonizing.
The fire soothes me. It always has. It calms the monster. We love watching it destroy.
“He’ll die in two minutes,” I tell Matleon, not taking my eyes off the burning Hunter.
“You should have told me earlier,” he complains, then steps away. Moments later, water starts sprinkling over us.
I keep my eyes locked on Hunter until the last flame dies. His thrashing has stopped. He’s unconscious, hopefully not dead.
I drag a hand through my wet hair and turn toward the door. Matleon and Bruno follow. Outside, Matleon orders a guard to take Hunter to the emergency room.
“That was a good show,” Matleon says, sounding content.
“I’m done with him. He’s all yours.”
“That’s if he’s still alive. It doesn’t matter much. Dad wanted to hang him upside down in the museum, with holes drilled into his body, and let him slowly bleed out and rot inside a glass chamber until he looks nicely disgusting. We can still do that.”
They have a museum on an island in the Pacific Ocean where they preserve the bodies of their enemies in frozen glass chambers, leaving them in their final moments of suffering, with their crimes written above them.
There’s a reason people think twice before going against the King of the Underworld.
Only idiots like Chris are foolish enough to try.
“If you want Chris for your museum, send someone for his body. If the animals haven’t eaten him whole, you might get lucky. I’ll send you the coordinates.”
He nods.